Weekly Newsletter for The Freelancers: Here is the latest newsletter of the week starting on 29th October 2018.
Imagine you are interviewing a freelancer and asked the question “How Valuable Is Your Time?” The reason that we asked you the question is because it is important from a work-life balance perspective that you know the answer.
This enabled you to know what you could outsource to other freelancers and still make a fair and reasonable profit. You could then take your children on an outing during the school holidays.
If you are wise you would foresee when you were undertaking a gig that was complex and had parts that you could outsource during the school holidays that you were prepared to do it. One of the most essential parts of a successful outsourcing is to know the questions to ask of the potential freelancer to help you with the gig.
It means you are then comfortable with your delegation of the work. This is an important knowledge to have because you can enjoy the break with your family. It is also called effective delegation if you can remember your 9 to 5 work in the corporate world.
UpWork have published 9 Interview questions to find the perfect freelancer online which appears in their Upwork Hiring Headquarters blog which you can read here.
In my copy of The Freelancer’s Bible written by the founder of the Freelancers Union, Sara Horowitz with Toni Sciarra Poynter there is an entire chapter (number 11 on page 283) entitled The Nimble Freelancer: Subcontracting and Building Teams. This is an important skill that you need to develop. Click on this link to go to the review.
Motivate Yourself!
“From an early age I didn’t buy into the value systems of
working hard in a nine-to-five job. I thought creativity,
friendship and loyalty and pushing the boundaries of what
was acceptable was much more interesting.”
– Adam Clayton
Should You Quit Your 9 To 5 Job Without A Backup Plan?
When your boss finally has got you to the stage of wanting to quit your job and walk out and not come back, should you? There are numerous people that have been in this position. However, should you cool it and think? There are two points of view on this and here they are:
One point of view is that if your boss has finally crossed the red line and you can’t take it anymore e.g. bullying, you are better to make a stand and leave on the spot before you lose your courage. There is an article from Inc.com by Quora entitled 10 Things I Learned When I Quit My Job With No Solid Backup Plan.
This article takes the point of view of someone that did not have a plan and what they learned from doing it. It is an important article and you can read it from here. This is especially true if you feel that you are approaching that situation.
The second point of view is for those people who leave their 9 to 5 job and have a plan for what they are going to do. As an ex-financial planner, you will know what approach that I favor. Sarah Li Cain has written 5 Critical Steps to take before quitting your job for good and it appears on the blog of Lifehack.org. You can read Sarah’s article here.
They are both worth reading because you can profit from the experience of other people who have traveled the path before you. Many freelancers go down this path. I will be on the lookout for top rating ebooks on this subject. These articles are worth sharing with friends if you are aware they are going through this situation.
Productivity Tip of the Week
For All Freelancers Working Online- Easier Understanding Of Search Engine Optimization!
Do you understand the impact that search engine optimization (SEO) can have on your productivity? All businesses, including freelancers, need to have a good grasp of the essentials of search engine optimization. The reason is that it can reduce the costs of obtaining new clients and the serving of old clients. This quote is right is clearly correct:
“SEO isn’t about gaming the system anymore; it’s about learning
how to play by the rules.” – Jordan Teicher
Michael Akinlaby is a Freelance writer and SEO consultant and has written How To Measure The ROI Of Your SEO Campaign which appears in the MarketGrowth.com blog and you can read about it here.
It is nice to know how to measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of a campaign, but what matters more is to make it work better for you. This article from the Freelancer.com Community Blog by Edward Suez entitled They’re Lying: SEO Is Not Hard is aimed at helping freelancers to improve their SEO. You can read Edward’s article here.
Work-Life Balance Tip of the Week
Freelancer Burnout Is Real And You Need To Know How To Avoid It?
Freelancer burnout is real and it is one of the most important work-life balance issues that you will face in your career as a freelancer. It is important that you learn how to recognize it and avoid it.
When researching this post I was looking for two topics to cover, one was recognizing the signs of burnout and the second was how to go about avoiding it when you recognize the signs. This knowledge can save you a lot of stress, time and money. It can have a significant impact on your family life as well.
Laura Spencer wrote an article for The Freelancer Folder blog entitled Do You Recognize the Early Warning Signs of Freelancer Burnout? You can read her article by clicking here. The other article is from Intuit Quickbooks blog and is entitled 8 Tips to Avoid Freelancer Burnout which you can read by clicking here.
Financial Tip of the Week
How Valuable Is Your Time?
Have you worked at how valuable your work time is and what your charge out rate would be if you were being paid on an hourly basis? This is an important question especially if you find that you are under work-life balance pressure trying to get a complex gig completed on time and on budget.
Imagine that on top of this it is the kids’ school holidays and they want to go to the local fun park where the local city council is putting on “fun in the park” during school holidays. What do you do?
If you have been smart you will have already thought about the question in the first paragraph. If you have, you would know what you need to charge for a fair and reasonable profit and what tasks you can outsource to ease the work-life balance pressure.
Then you can say to the kids “Sure, when do you want to go?” and they will say “Good on you, Mum”. If you haven’t here is what you do: start to think about outsourcing parts of your contracts!
The first step is to become familiar with outsourcing platforms and read stories about others who have gone down that path. Smart thinking? Of course, it is!
Ask the kids. Here is an overview of some platforms you can use by clicking here Here is a story about someone who has gone down this path that can be read here.
Drought News
The www.abc.net.au is keeping a full coverage of the drought crisis in Eastern Australia and how you can help which you can read here.
I will maintain the links for the New Economy articles which are skills and job-focused training. You can read one such article by clicking on the link: Training choices matter for freelancers and career changers.
There are now 5,000 skills in 90 categories that the digital economy can offer according to Upwork’s 2nd Quarter Skills Index for 2018, see here.
Articles now on our website that are relevant are listed here:
- https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/Freelance-Retirees.html
- https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/Millennials-freelancing-home-mortgage-save.html
- https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/Students-freelancing-student-loans.html
- https://www.freelance-work-guide.com/freelancing-repay-housing-negative-equity.html
There will be more over the coming months.
Amazon News
Artificial intelligence is disrupting and transforming industries and one of the leading companies in the world in using AI is Amazon. Steven Levy has written Inside Amazon’s artificial intelligence flywheel for www.wired.com which you can read about here.
The weekly AWS news video link to acloud.guru is here. They are the leading trainers globally for AWS freelancers.
Amazon Associates Website Case Study
The latest article on BestSellersHourly.com Amazon Case Study website is entitled Smart choices matter for millennial families – 15 reasons why! which you can read here.
Freelancers And Cyber Security
Pinterest: In view of the recent hack of Reddit we have decided to link to the Australian Bankers Association fact sheet entitled Small Business – Protecting Your Business Information Online which you can access here. We urge you look at other Fact Sheets that are available from the Association as well related to business and personal security.
We have gained approval from Robert Siciliano to bring you extracts from his books related to cyber security for freelancers. Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant.
He also gives self defense and personal safety seminars. Robert provides safety and identity theft fraud prevention tips and advice on multimedia channels in the United States. We have his approval to bring you weekly extracts from his books:
Image Source: ROBERT SICILIANO
What is financial identity theft? (Part 1)
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